Mystery Detective of the Steam World

Chapter 348 After Lunch (The Next Day)
The fact that the invitation wasn't sent might not seem like a big deal in modern society. But in this era, it's a different story.

First, not every household had a communication device, and even if they did, you might not know the other person's number. For example, Earl Cromwell chose to write to Levy instead of speaking directly because he didn't know Levy's number. Therefore, in this era, letter writing was the mainstream method.

The same applies to banquet invitations. This is just a birthday party. If it were a wedding, they would even publish announcements in the local newspaper such as "XXX and XXX will get married on X month X day in a church".

From this perspective, newspapers can be considered the earliest form of online forums (BBS) in human history.

Therefore, not sending out invitations is the same as "the recipient did not receive an invitation." In other words, if it weren't for these events, everyone would find that not a single guest has attended the banquet tomorrow.

That will be the real hell.

Imagine this: you notify all your relatives and friends to attend your wedding banquet, but on the wedding day, the banquet hall is empty except for your own family members. That would be an absolute nightmare.

Although it was just a birthday party, the issue was equally serious because it also marked Sophie's social debut. A social debut is supposed to introduce Sophie to other people her age, but none of them came. What are you introducing her to? Air?
It's no wonder Isaac was so angry; after all, he had no reason not to be angry about how his sister was treated.

So, who did it?

It must be said that Li Wei was quite curious about this as well.

The atmosphere at lunch was a bit strange because after Isaac entered the restaurant, he said to everyone with a serious expression, "I have something very important to say after lunch." Everyone was a little surprised, since Isaac had been a nice guy before, even though he wasn't very noticeable.

However, at that time he was furious and looked extremely angry. Although everyone was a little surprised, they didn't say anything.

Soon after lunch, the servants cleared away the plates, and only then did Isaac stand up and look at everyone.

"I apologize for taking up your time, but I have something very important to tell you."

As he spoke, Isaac raised his hand and threw the mailbag onto the table with a thud.

"I think you all remember that before lunch, Sir Levi, Uncle Gladys, and I went to check the inventory, and it was in the cellar that Sir Levi found this bag. Do you know what was in the bag?"

At this point, Isaac glanced at Sophie, who looked completely bewildered. Seeing Sophie's reaction, Isaac gritted his teeth and continued speaking.

"The invitation to tomorrow's banquet is inside!"

"Hey?"

"Ok?"

It must be said that everyone was taken aback by Isaac's answer.

"Really? You're not lying to me!"

Bianca also stood up in surprise, reached into the parcel and took out several letters, glancing at the covers.

"Ah, it does seem so... Can I take a look inside?"

"of course."

"Okay, then I won't be polite!"

As Bianca spoke, she opened the envelope and took out the invitation inside.

"Hmm...? It really is! Grandmother, look!"

As she spoke, Bianca handed the invitation to Ms. Ava, who put on her reading glasses, looked at it carefully, and slowly nodded.

"Hmm...that's true..."

"How could such a thing happen?"

At this moment, the others also took out letters from their parcels and opened them, looking at the invitations inside. Even Herman, who had been pretending to be dead, couldn't help but look at Isaac.

"What's going on? Didn't you say you'd already sent out the invitations?"

"I'm pretty sure I gave the invitations to the postman, and this bag should also be the postman's bag."

Isaac nodded.

"So what's going on?"

"I do not know either."

As Isaac spoke, he looked at the crowd.

"But I'm certain someone wants to see us fail! I suspect someone did this on purpose! Just to make us lose our inheritance rights!"

"Let me state upfront that I did not do such a stupid thing."

Gladys raised his hand again.

"This banquet concerns the honor of the Cromwell family. How could I do such a thing?"

"That's not good."

Just then, Hermann let out a cold laugh.

"After all, if the invitations aren't sent out, no one will know that the Cromwell family is hosting a banquet, so it won't affect the Cromwell family's honor, right? Besides, given your status, you probably don't care much about the Cromwell family's honor, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

Upon hearing Hermann's provocation, Gladys's ever-playful expression vanished, replaced by a serious and cold one.

"You are the one who shouldn't think that just because you changed your surname you can keep calling him Cromwell. You're just an outsider with no blood relation to the Cromwell family. Don't push your luck!"

"How did I get so arrogant!"

Hermann's expression suddenly changed, and he slammed his hand on the table and stood up.

"This is my daughter's debut and birthday party. Someone is trying to deliberately ruin it. As her father, of course I won't allow such a thing to happen!"

"Hey, that sounds nice, but everyone knows you staged it all yourself."

Gladys sneered.

"You businessmen always play this game, accusing others of sabotage and making yourselves look so pitiful, when in reality it might be you yourselves! Then you try to pin the blame on us, hoping to prevent the old man from giving us our inheritance rights. Although I have no interest in the inheritance, I won't let you do this! Trying to mess with me? You're just a penniless nobody with a few stinking bucks, what are you anyway!"

At this moment, Gladys finally shed his usual carefree demeanor and revealed the brutal side of a soldier.

The atmosphere instantly became tense. Herman and Gladys stared at each other, seemingly ready to fight at the slightest provocation. Marilyn looked at her husband, then at Gladys, wanting to say something, but in the end, she could only stand by, heartbroken.

As for her daughter Sophie, she was also silent, her face ashen, her teeth clenched tightly. After all, her long-awaited birthday party and social debut had been ruined just like that; the blow to the young girl… well, it must have been huge?
"Uh... this..."

Bianca looked around, unsure of what to say, then her eyes lit up when she looked at Levi.

"Ah, Sir Levi! By the way, what do you think? You are the Imperial Detective, I'm sure you know who did it, right?"

With Bianca's interruption, the tense atmosphere relaxed a bit, and everyone looked at Li Wei. Facing everyone's gaze, Li Wei simply spread his hands and smiled slightly.

"Well... I'll only know after I investigate."

"Then, then, could you please ask Sir Levi to investigate? I'm sure you have a way, right?"

As Bianca spoke, she clasped her hands together and looked at Levi with a pleading gaze. Seeing Bianca's expression, Levi smiled slightly.

"Okay, I can look into it."

“Phew…” Hearing Li Wei’s answer, Bianca breathed a sigh of relief and then looked at the two of them.

"Then, Uncle Herman, Uncle Gladys, how about we leave this matter to Lord Levy? Surely you don't doubt the wisdom of the Empire's number one detective?"

"Of course I didn't mean that."

Gladys chuckled again, resuming his previous carefree expression, and sat back down in his chair, raising his hands. Hermann remained silent; although he seemed displeased, he clearly didn't dare to show any displeasure to Levi. After all, Earl Cromwell was absent, and Levi was the highest-ranking person present—he was also an earl, and a Knight of the Thistles at that.

Strictly speaking, Levy's rank was higher than that of the Earl of Cromwell.

Provoking Li Wei is clearly not a wise choice.

So Hermann could only sit down again and nod to Levi.

"I entrust everything to you, Sir Levi."

After that, the atmosphere became extremely awkward. Although the Hermann family hadn't gotten along particularly well with others before, this argument completely severed ties between them. Everyone went back to their rooms to rest, except for Levi, who remained in the dining room, staring at the package and the invitation inside.

He reached out and opened letter after letter, reading and thinking as he went.

It's undeniably a strange incident. And it's safe to say it was definitely done by a human, not some ghost or monster. But why? Isaac said he personally witnessed the postman putting the invitations into his personal mailbag, so he could indeed rest assured. It's like when we hire a courier; once we see the courier put the package into a box or envelope, we naturally assume our task is complete.

Next, the other party will deliver the items to their designated locations.

Unfortunately, apparently no one here is calling to complain about the late delivery.

If Isaac wasn't lying, then something else must have happened after he heard Sophie scream and left. The postman left, but without his bag… Hmm, that's unusual. After all, a postman wouldn't leave his mailbag behind.

By the way, this isn't the kind of parcel we use to send things now, but rather something like a canvas backpack that postmen used to carry on their backs. In the days before telephones were widespread, postmen carried these parcels on their backs, rode bicycles, and went from street to street delivering mail and newspapers.

This can be considered the postman's "work equipment".

Therefore, generally speaking, a postman should not leave behind his equipment and suddenly disappear.

Okay, let's skip the technique for now, so what's the motivation?
This is what Li Wei finds interesting.

Before his transmigration, Li Wei also enjoyed detective and mystery anime, games, movies, and novels. However, he didn't particularly like the criminal methods; more often than not, he preferred the love, hate, and grudges within the stories.

In fact, detective novels can be divided into several types, such as the classic school, the social school, the historical school, the suspense school, and the cold-blooded school.

The classic detective story is the most traditional kind, featuring locked rooms, alibis, unusual methods, and ultimately revealing the perpetrator's motive. In other words, the classic detective story emphasizes the methods used; the perpetrator's motives are irrelevant, even if the victim entered with their left foot first. The important thing is how the perpetrator uses unusual methods to create an alibi or how they dispose of the murder weapon to achieve acquittal.

These are the three major questions in orthodox reasoning: WHO DO TI (who did it), HOW DO IT (how did it), and WHY DO IT (why did it).

Traditional detectives are often considered masters of decryption, as they primarily deal with and solve puzzles. To use a current short video analogy, it's like watching a magician face a complex puzzle, then simply close their eyes, turn it, and solve the Rubik's Cube.

For example, most of the cases in a certain elementary school anime where the characters never grow up are actually classic detective stories. You see how far-fetched the motives of those criminals are, but that doesn't stop them from meticulously planning to kill people using all sorts of detective-like methods... Rather than cases, they are more like magic shows, and that elementary school student is the guy who exposes the magician's tricks to the audience in front of everyone.

Social realism primarily uses individual cases to expose social phenomena, without overly elaborate design of the criminal methods themselves. This is also a type that Li Wei prefers, or rather, Matilda's novels fit this category very well. If more people died in her romance novel, it would be considered a social realism mystery (laughs).

Of course, this doesn't mean that social realism detective fiction is completely devoid of crime methods; in fact, some social realism detective novels employ ingenious crime methods.

However, compared to the methods of the crimes, the social realism school tends to focus more on the loves, hates, and grudges of people in that society. It delves into the criminal motives of perpetrators, exploring their motivations from various levels, including interpersonal relationships, social interactions, and psychological analysis.

Of course, there are many more subcategories, such as those that emphasize technique, those that emphasize psychology, those that emphasize suspense, etc. But I won't go into those.

However, just because Li Wei enjoys watching doesn't mean he'd like to do it in real life. If he were to actually investigate a case in real life, Li Wei would definitely start with the evidence and methods, and then find the murderer.

As for the motive? You tell me! I'm still happy to be a bystander.

Novels are just novels, and they're fine for watching the excitement. But if you really want to talk about it, every murder case in reality is a kind of social mystery, since every murderer has all sorts of motives, which can be attributed to social injustice, a broken childhood, or the coldness of human relationships... Does that mean the police won't arrest people?

That's impossible, of course.

Okay, back to the main point: whoever it was, why did the prisoner do this?
Since there were no victims in this case, Li Wei didn't mind letting his thoughts wander and thinking things through.

Isaac's accusations were valid. Indeed, if they messed things up, their standing with Earl Cromwell would plummet, and they would lose their right to the inheritance.

In terms of who benefits and who is suspected, naturally all other heirs are suspects.

But there is another person who is also a suspect.

That was Earl Cromwell himself.

Levi remembered that Earl Cromwell had told him he had considered simply removing the Hermann family from the succession dispute, but he hadn't done so. He guessed it was for his daughter Marilyn's sake, but was it really that simple? Recalling the old earl's ambiguity on the matter, Levi felt there was another reason.

If it was the old count who did it, then... this would logically prevent the Hermann family from competing for the inheritance, and no one would know that it was the old count who did it.

But if that's the case, wouldn't it be redundant for the old count to come to him again? Or does he feel it's not safe?

Or are there other criminals behind this?
"Da da da da da!"

Just then, Li Wei heard hurried footsteps coming down the corridor, and then he saw Bianca walk into the restaurant. When she saw Li Wei, the girl immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank goodness, Sir Levi, you're still here."

"Hmm? What's up?"

"Yes, Sir Levy!"

Upon hearing Li Wei's question, Bianca playfully straightened up and gave Li Wei a salute.

"I want to join the investigation too!"

"you?"

"Yes, please let me be your assistant!"

"You? To be my assistant? Why?"

"Because it's very interesting."

Bianca chuckled.

"And Sir Levi, you may not know this, but you are a very popular star at our school. If everyone knew that I was solving cases with you and was your assistant, they would be so envious of me."

"…………………"

Well, that's one reason.

Li Wei thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Okay, I agree."

"Great... ah, I mean, this is fantastic! Where do we begin?"

"Um……………"

Faced with Bianca's question, Levi thought for a moment.

"Let's go ask the servant about what happened."

(End of this chapter)